Now What? Novalar Sells Its Anesthesia Reversal Drug to Septodont

In an unexpected development, San Diego’s Novalar Pharmaceuticals says today it has sold OraVerse, its dental anesthesia reversal agent and only FDA-approved product, to Lancaster, PA-based Septodont, a leading supplier of dental anesthetics.

The big question arising from the sale is what’s next for Novalar? OraVerse has been the main focus of the company’s business activities since Domain Associates partner Eckard Weber got the idea while talking about the lingering effects of dental anesthetics during a dental exam. Weber, an M.D., pharmacologist, and venture capitalist, founded Novalar in 2000. He recruited CEO Donna Janson from Europe to run the company.

In a statement from the companies, Septodont will pay Novalar and its investors an upfront payment for OraVerse, and will pay milestones and royalties on product sales. No specific numbers were disclosed.

At one time, Novalar was talking about creating a $300 million to $400 million market for Oraverse in the United States. But at this time last year, it was clear that OraVerse sales were slower than Novalar had planned. Septodont, a 75-year-old company that provides anesthetics for 500 million injections a year around the world, can take advantage of its well-established sales and distribution network in North America and international markets where Novalar has no partnerships. Novalar signed an exclusive license and distribution deal in Germany for OraVerse with Sanofi-Aventis Deutschland GmbH.

Novalar has raised at least $43 million in venture capital. Its investors include Boston Millennia Partners, Domain Associates, Genevest, Montreux Equity Partners, New Enterprise Associates, SR One, and Sears Capital Management.

So what’s next for Novalar?

The company’s website describes another dental product in its pipeline. Novalar licensed the patent rights for a novel endodontic therapy (designated NV-201) in 2007 for a polymer fiber that delivers an antibiotic directly into the root canal. With 17 million root canal procedures performed in the United States, Novalar sees an opportunity in developing a new technique for using clindamycin, a common dental antibiotic, to keep bacteria at bay between root canal visits.

The company adds that it is continually “searching for new dental technologies to license to bolster our product pipeline.”

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.